Fond Rememberances
by Bug-Eyed Earl
Summary: As the author moves beyond fanfiction, he retells his memories of his first fanfic- a ridiculously large Star Fox comic he made when he was still a kid. It's either horrid beyong belief, or sort of, possibly...cool. A little. You decide.


Hey there. I assume that a good portion of you are writers- else why would you be here? Sure, you might simply enjoy reading fanfiction, but enough of you are undoubtedly writers.

So I ask you: how long have you been writing? Some of you only do it for fun. But to those of you who have aspirations about making a career of it: when did you make this decision?

For me, it was when I was seven. And I wasted no time creating my first story that I hoped I could turn into a cartoon when I got older. Now, the basic idea existed for years in my pre-pubescent brain, but most of what followed came when I was eleven and discovered Star Wars...

It was set on a planet called Coeus- the inhabitants were bipedal (I knew that term when I was that young- I was a pretty knowledgeable kid) animals. It was definitely in the vein of Star Wars. The hero was a cat, and his two friends were a mouse and a dog. They were a sort of proto- Star Fox team. I was young, so I couldn't come up with too much more than a basic save-the-princess plot. Actually, it was the king and the princess who had to be saved from Garm, a cyborg warthog who led the Magnacrons- all around evil-doers.

And when I was thirteen- Star Fox came out. There were too many similarities for me to continue with my story- I had a vague understanding of copyright even then. I was disappointed for awhile- and then got to work on the biggest creative task my mind (and hands; I draw too) had ever undertaken.

The setting- five years after the war with Andross, an academy was opened, and the story was about the first graduates of the flight school that specializes in training potential Arwing Pilots. The three main characters are Nick, the cat, Max, the dog, and a mouse named John. They chat a little bit after the graduation ceremony (Nick, upon receiving his diploma, did a series of ridiculous somersaults in front of the audience after setting off a fireworks display he had set up for himself. Stupid, I know, but it got the point across that he was thrilled to be graduating.)

Suddenly, the base is attacked by Andross' forces. They get into their Arwings and take off, and an intense battle ensues- and Nick's friends are killed. Finally, he wins the battle, and the enemy ships vanish. It turns out that it was an elaborate training exercise, done mainly with holograms that would fire beams that activate a remote control on Arwings that cut communications and bring them back to the base. Nick's friends aren't dead- nobody died. The headmasters of the Academy, the Star Fox team, and Fara Phoenix, address the students, and tell them that they have made them very proud that day.

Andross himself is watching this from Venom. He tells his second in command, Commander Tuatara (a tuatara- they're very cool looking lizards from New Zealand, I believe.) that the fake battle was nothing compared to what he can unleash.

Soon enough, the real attack begins. The students are put to the sword, and this battle is far more intense- and costly- then the simulation.

The star Fox team joins in.

The face of Andross appears above the city (he's using what the Nintendo Power comic called "the telekinetic amplifier"), and Fox shoots the eye out- but the eye instead flies out of the skull after being set free, and catching him by surprise, shoots a blast that destroys Fox and his ship.

That's right. I loved the video game, but I killed Fox. Nick flies into one of those huge saucer ships form the original game, and finds Arwing appendages. What are Arwing appendages? Something I invented. Basically, an Arwing lowers itself onto a pair of robotic arms and legs and becomes a mech. This was supposed to be like a videogame where you find power-ups in unlikely places, though it could have been left by a less fortunate pilot who had to abandon them in a failed attempt to destroy the ship. Nick destroys the ship, but an attack carrier arrives on the scene. A sort of vacuum appears on the bottom and sucked up all of the destroyed ships (As much as they can get, before escaping.

Fara is devastated, and Nick finds her in a bar later. He tells her the story of how he was genetically engineered (kind of ironic that they made Andross an evil geneticist in Star Fox 64 when the engineered character was the hero in my fic), and instead of heading to the shelter (which Cornerians in my fics did when Andross attacked) when Andross attacked his village, he grabbed a rifle and started shooting at the fighters. He managed to kill a few pilots, but he realized that he couldn't escape, until someone hopped aboard the only fighter that the village had and managed to distract them enough for Nick to escape, but the pilot is killed when it is destroyed, but the Cornerian army arrives on the scene. The enemy is driven away, and Nick finds out, to his horror, that his father was the one piloting the ship.

As he explains to Fara, the guilt he felt over his father's death led him to join the military. I think he was trying to alleviate her guilt by giving an example of someone truly being at fault for someone else's death.

Fara falls asleep on her couch, and has a dream of seeing Fox again. They kiss, but he flies into a rage when she calls him by his name. He did something that shows him to be evil- I think he turned into Andross, or tore off his own clothes to reveal a Venomian military uniform.

Fara wakes up, long enough to realize that she has a lot of healing ahead of her before she goes back to sleep.

That, my friends, was a 70 page comic, written on Xerox paper that took me roughly three months to finish in early 1993. I remember trying to work on it on the way to two uncles' funerals (they both died of cancer within 90 minutes of each other), and showing it to relatives at the dinner.

A sequel, of course, followed.

The theme in the sequel was that Andross NEVER left his telekinetic amplifier. He was constantly jacked in, and appeared in any size he wanted. So even the Andross that walked the halls of his palace was an insanefully powerful hologram that could fry you in an instant.

So a hologram of Andross appears to Professor Hangar and a lizard scientist, who have started cloning their dead soldiers to keep their numbers up. Andross looks in horror at a clone that is still unseen, and fires eye lasers at it. The scientist, so proud of his creations, jumps in front of the still developing clone and is vaporized. Professor Hangar steps in, and points out what a sick joke it would be on their enemies if they used this clone. Andross sees his point, and later, 5 clones lead a new assault, each piloting a giant robot. The leader is the clone Andross almost destroyed, but he remains hidden behind a thick helmet.

Another attack, another mission for the Star Fox team. Fara gets into a furious duel with the leader, and shoots him down in the end. She lands her Arwing, as the battle is over by this time, to try to capture this obviously skilled pilot. The pilot leaps out, and rips off his helmet, revealing him to be a lizard. They fight, and in the end she knocks him out.

A cow doctor, Dr. Bovine, looks at the captured pilot when he is taken back to the base. He tries to take a pulse, and when he does, he notices that the pilot is wearing a second skin, which he promptly cuts off to reveal...

Fox. Of course. Except now, the cloned Fox is evil, and Fara faints when she sees the hate filled eyes of what was once her fiancée (I never said so, but I always imagined them to be engaged).

Dr. Bovine realizes that Fox has an implant in his brain that controls him, and injects a nanobot to destroy it. A miniature battle ensues, as it is revealed that the implant has weapons to defend itself. The implant is destroyed, and Fox returns to his old self.

This is where I will criticize my own writing- Fara accepts him way too easily, when he had tried to kill her just hours before. Dr. Bovine still doesn't trust him, and is very hostile towards him. They go out on a date (in another ridiculous leap of logic, as there is no way a prisoner would be allowed off the base, mind control or not), and they run into Dr. Bovine. The get into a fight, and Fox clobbers him.

As they leave, they look into a telescope that you can put money into to look out into space, in time to see a fleet from Venom come out of hyperspace.

Corneria immediately goes into alert, and Fox and Fara run back to the base. Fara gets into her Arwing, and Fox steals one.

The size of the fleet is overwhelming, but it is still taking its position around the planet. There was a lot of bad writing as to why they didn't attack right away, but I'll make up something I probably didn't at the time- they don't have quite enough ships to guard Venom with the same numbers they are attacking Corneria, so they are trying to give them a chance to surrender without losing too much of their fleet. Fox and Fara fly through the Black Hole, but a land mine inside the debris field hurls them out around Fortuna, which was, in the original game, inhabited by giant monsters.

They end up finding their way to a city- the planet has an advanced civilization that has remained hidden. The inhabitants are bipedal dinosaurs.

Yeah, I know. That may seem to have preceded Dinosaur Planet, but in reality, the idea probably came from the Triceraton characters in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic, and snowballed into the idea of bipedal dinosaurs. So don't give me too much credit.

A giant Triceratops, Tor, befriends them after they set their ships down for repairs. He takes them to their base, and tells them that they have become aware of Andross' attacks on the rest of the system, but cannot offer technological support, as they are still too primitive.

Unfortunately, the Monarch Dodora has started attacking their cities. They think Andross is controlling it. Fox and Fara agree to stop it before they leave. However, a councial member is murdered in the base, and the two newcomers are blamed. But they escape, and prove it was Tor- who is revealed to be a Terminator-like robot, who they destroy. He invited them to the base so he could perform key assassinations for Andross and have someone to blame (if they were so primitive, why would Andross need a covert assassin instead of a shitload of bombs- another plot hole.).

The Dinosaur people are grateful, but at that moment, the Dodora attacks their city. Fox and Fara have fixed their Arwings, and take off. They lead it away from the city, and burn away part of its side, revealing another robot. Eventually, they find the real Dodora and blow open his cage. They also shoot off the head of the fake Dodora (one of the two, actually), but it turns out to be a fighter craft, and it takes off after Fara. The fake Dodora does a sort of flip, and its body parts arrange to form a bipedal (you can tell I like that word) monster. Fara destroys the fighter craft, and both her and Fox blow up the robot. The pilots escape in one of those little pod cars that Andross used to control the Dodora in the comic, but the real Dodora melts it with its fire breath.

Having freed the Dodora, the guardian of Fortuna, they have saved another world, and move back into the Black Hole to Venom.

As they thought, there is less of a fight in Venom's orbit, and they are joined by the rest of the team.

The battle begins, and goes down to the surface. They fight Andross, who grows to the size of a kaiju. Fox fires a Nova Bomb down his throat, and the feedback destroys the telekinetic amplifier, nearly killing the real Andross as his 100 foot high copy goes up like Judgment Day. Eventually, Fox and Fara enter Andross' base and are forced to leave their ships, as well as my three characters. They never meet, actually- they have their own separate adventures. Fox finds his father (whose fate was ambiguous in the original game. I remember I came up with an explanation as to how he was separated from the whale ship from the comic), and frees him. They go after Andross, and break open an elevator shaft to catch him as his elevator takes him to his escape craft. But Andross is heavily armed, and shoots through the roof of the elevator, killing Fox, Sr (this was before Star Fox 64 identified him as James McCloud) . Fox and Andross fight hand to hand, and Fox ends up stabbing him in a rage, and grabs a gun, holding it to his forehead. Andross laughs and pulls the pins on a bunch of grenades he has strapped into the lining of his coat (they're small enough not to be cumbersome or even noticeable.) Fox shoots out the floor of the elevator, and pushes Andross out. Andross screams as he falls down the shaft and explodes. After this, Fox says goodbye to his father.

It's finally over- the circle is complete. The mad ape has been destroyed.

Meanwhile, Nick and his friends encounter Professor Hangar. Now, you may be wondering why the robot from the original shares its name with some scientist. Well, the scientist transforms into the Professor Hangar robot, and they fight it. Nick throws a huge sheet of metal at him (Nick is super strong), which embeds in his midsection. Max shoots the cables holding a girder (they're in a construction area) one at a time. The first makes the girder fall down to where it is pointing straight down, and the second shot drives it home like a stake, destroying Professor Hangar. I remember the visual gag was actually very cool- Professor Hangar was crushed by the girder, but then he exploded, sending the girder several feet straight up in the air.

Meanwhile, a clone of Andross crawls out of a tank, and is confronted by Commander Tuatara, who now remembers how he was forced into Andross' servitude, thanks to the destruction of the telekinetic amplifier. Actually, all of the lizards are now free, and Tuatara promptly kills the new Andross and destroys the cloning facility. He escapes just in time-the lizards are angry now, and destroy Andross' base rather than attack Corneria.

In the end, it's a happy ending. I vaguely remember little details that I can't quite recall.

One important note: all of the characters from the games get a lot of screen time in this 300 page epic. But I just can't remember all of it.

One thing I remember is this (from the instruction manual):

Emperor Andross was once known as Doctor Andross, a scientific genius who worked at an advanced lab on Corneria, the fourth planet in the Lylat system. Every since his childhood, Andross's brilliance outshone that of other children. As an adult, Dr. Andross began developing a power engine based on hyper-spatial energy. Selfish and blinded by ambition, he repeatedly conducted dangerous experiments in the heart of Corneria's most populated city. After many warnings from the planet's ruling council, he was finally banished from the planet for endangering the inhabitants of Corneria.

At one point, I showed that. Basically, some sort of reactor almost blew up and Andross wouldn't shut it down, until his boss ejected it into orbit.

OK- What I remember was pretty good for a 13 year old. I'd be embarrassed if I wrote it now, as I know I could do infinitely better. But still- 300 pages in 9 months (roughly March-December 1993)is pretty good. Granted, my art was a lot simpler, but the average 32 page comic, minus 8 pages for ads, is 24 pages. That's 288 pages in one year. Something to think about.

I shared this because many of the Star Fox fans are a lot younger than me, and I thought this would be of interest- possibly one of the first fanfics based on Star Fox ever written, and probably one of the biggest. I really wish I still had it and could share some of it with you, but unfortunately, I don't.

If any fanfic authors like any of the ideas they find here, or... if one of use is ambitious enough to retell this story in their own fanfic, contact me. I certainly would enjoy seeing what you come up with.

Star Fox has always had a special place in my heart, due to the fond memories from:

Creating my original story

Combining it with Star Fox

Playing the games, which is like playing a game based on my world.

Creating the comic, which was a lot of fun.

I hate to say it, but these outside factors probably make me love the game more than I normally would.

Now, I have moved on. I rarely play video games, instead, writing screenplays. I have a few horror ones in the works, a fantasy/sci-fi one with the rather amusing theme that living in an advanced future can be just as boring and mind-numbing as today's corporate grind (I hope I do it justice), and a really strange action movie.

But my Nintendo Gamecube sits on my shelf, awaiting the day that my old friends come back to visit. Fox McCloud. Falco Lomardi. Peppy Hare. Slippy Toad. General Pepper. They'll always have a place in my heart, and I look forward to seeing them again next year with the release of Star Fox 2 (or Star Fox Armada, depending on which source you read)


End file.
